Peter Lindsay (Herbert, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This motion condemns the Queensland state government for its continued mismanagement of our education system. Schools in Queensland are suffering. Teachers are treated with disdain and disrespect. That is why the case for teachers must be made in the parliament tonight. Jason Inch, a teacher at Stuart State School, made these points to me and the education department:

• You have allowed anybody to become a teacher by making it far too easy to enter an education degree at university and actually act surprised when deficient teachers graduate.
• You cut funding and staffing positions and leave infrastructure in a disgusting state and wonder why marks aren’t as good as you believe they should be.
• You tie our hands behind our backs, when dealing with troubled children and struggling parents and tell us “you’re not just teachers anymore, you have to be a social worker, parental figure and policeman, as well”, without providing adequate training and payment for hours worked and services rendered.
• You do the complete opposite of what you ask us to teach our students. Why should we teach our students about respect and positive attitudes, when you openly express the complete opposite about teachers in all areas of the media.
• You actually believe that you can compare a school like the Townsville Grammar School, with a budget in the millions of dollars, with Stuart State School and a budget in the thousands.
• You use a staffing model that crucifies small schools and makes it near on impossible to do what you ask to be done.
• You expect me to break the law, in relation to class size at the beginning of every year, that you said had to be enforced. Yet you never say “thanks for getting us out of a tight spot”, by fixing the problem.

It is very sad indeed that a teacher would come to his local member and indicate this litany of problems. The Queensland state government have let education in our great state fall into disrepair. They are ignoring the problems plaguing the system and ignoring the concerns that are raised by parents and teachers. Teachers are in the best possible position to tell the government what the problems in education are and how best to fix them, but the Bligh government is not listening.

Let me tell you about the conditions at the Stuart State School in Townsville and about one of the dedicated teachers, Jason Inch. Stuart State School has a proud 117-year history. It has a team of great teachers and staff, who are working to make sure students get the best education possible. The teachers do their absolute best, despite crumbling facilities and staffing cuts. I would like to tell you what Jason told me about his school and the problems he is facing as a Queensland teacher.

In the last two years Stuart State School has lost teaching positions because of mandated state rules. There has been no consideration of local circumstances, which has led to class sizes that are far too big. For the composite classes of grades 5, 6 and 7, the class size has been illegal under Queensland education law. In the last year the class had 31 students and in 2010 the class started with 29 students. Two of the students have special education needs and at least six need additional learning support.

There are not enough permanent teachers to meet the needs of the students. The school has two teacher aides who have to divide their time between three composite classes. The principal, in addition to her administrative duties, has to spread herself across all three classes in a supplementary teaching role. This actually worked in a positive way in 2009, as the principal was able to devote time to students with learning difficulties. However, the department of education’s changes have now outsourced this role to a regional teacher who can spend only a few hours a week at the school. The school has three permanent teachers who have to take on greater and greater roles as additional staff are cut. Where there are itinerant teachers they are shared with so many other schools in the region that the Stuart school rarely sees them on a regular basis. This is very sad.

The school does not have a technology technician. It has to rely on its teachers to fix any technical problems that arise. The result of all of this is that students lose out. Teachers are doing their absolute best, but there are only so many hours in a day, and, as the staff cuts increase so will the burden on teachers. The end result is that individual students get less one-on-one time and support from their teachers.

Budget cuts and staffing losses are not the only problem facing Stuart State School. Their facilities, being such an old school, are crumbling and there is no money to fix them. The school is not entitled to a grounds keeper. This means that when pipes burst or spring a leak the school must spend their limited budget to pay workmen to come in to fix the problem. During the wet season the grass in the playground grows to unmanageable heights and it is difficult to find parents who are able to mow it. In the dry season it becomes a dustbowl.

The school sits on the outskirts of Townsville surrounded by bushland, and this provides a whole variety of problems, particularly with snakes who find homes in the long grass and even in the classrooms. Without money to address any of these problems, the students lose out and their school environment becomes very dangerous.

While the problems I have described this evening are specific to Stuart State School, similar issues exist that affect other schools in Townsville and more broadly in Queensland. I would like to finish by reading further from the email from Jason Inch:

We may be a small school, but the percentage per capita in relation to staffing and learningrequirements are the same, if not greater, than those of larger schools. How can the Queensland Education Minister believe it when he says that all schools are treated equally, and that the changes occurring in our school and many others are a positive change?

The email goes on:

I love my job, my students and my school and will do so until there is no one left to teach or the school falls down. I wouldn’t be teaching if I didn’t.

(Time expired)

Arch Bevis (Brisbane, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for Herbert feigns concern about the interests of teachers. I stand here as somebody who spent a good deal of his adult life working in education and for education and, indeed,  spent 13 years working as an official for the Queensland Teachers Union—and proud of it. I remember what the situation was like when the Liberal and National parties controlled education in Queensland and were in state government. I am going to make a few comments about that.

Before I do, let me say that at any point in time it is more than possible to refer to the needs of schools. We never put enough resources into education and, as I have said many times in this parliament, as a government you cannot put too much money into the training and education of your population. There is no such thing as people who are too well educated or too highly skilled. The simple fact of life is that it is only under the Labor government that that serious injection of funds occurs, as we have seen here in the Commonwealth through the Building the Education Revolution.

Let me go back to Queensland and the sorts of environments that existed when those whom the member for Herbert would have in state parliament running the show were actually in government running the show. It was a regular occurrence for schools to open without buildings completed. It was a regular occurrence for schools to open without any safe playing areas. I can remember going to Dakabin State High School when it opened without a blade of grass or a level area—nothing but rocks that had not even been levelled. I can remember schools endeavouring to get Army units to get their engineers out there to excavate the land so they could have something that was flat for the children to run on.

That was the provision of new school facilities under the Liberal and National parties in Queensland. But it was not just the facilities that were left wanting. When it came to the curriculum, they were every bit as ignorant and arrogant about the interests of teachers. A classic example of that was a curriculum developed for secondary schools called Social Education Material Projects—SEMP. It was developed by Australian educators for Australian educators, a collaborative effort between all of the states and the Commonwealth. It was used in every government school throughout Australia except in Queensland. In Queensland the Liberal and National parties then in government banned its use in Queensland schools. The irony was that if you went to a private school in Queensland then you would learn from that curriculum; if you went to any school in any other state in Australia you would learn from that curriculum; but if you went to a school governed by the National Party—

Peter Lindsay (Herbert, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Deputy Speaker, I seek to intervene.

Rowan Ramsey (Grey, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Is the member for Brisbane willing to give way?

Arch Bevis (Brisbane, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

No, I reject it, so let us keep going.

Ms Anna Burke (Chisholm, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for Lindsay is permitted to make an interjection.

Arch Bevis (Brisbane, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

He is permitted to ask if I will take a question, and I have said I will not. He is going into my time rather than listening to the debate.

Ms Anna Burke (Chisholm, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My apologies to the member for Brisbane. You can deny the intervention.

Arch Bevis (Brisbane, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Looking at standing orders is always a good thing to do. Given that the member for Herbert wants to interrupt and take about half a minute of the five minutes I have available, I want to refer to the member for Herbert’s view of education, because it is not only the Liberal and National parties that have arrogance and serious problems when it comes to dealing with teachers. When he first got elected back in 1996, the member for Herbert did an interview with James Cook University. Many teachers I know came, like I did, from backgrounds that would not have been described as wealthy, but they managed to get to university and become teachers. If he is concerned about teachers, I have to say that many of those teachers would not be in the profession if the member for Herbert had had his way in how they were selected. In an interview that was published in September 1996, he said, ‘Wealthy kids are usually the children of wealthy parents, who are wealthy because they are intelligent parents.’ He was making his comment in the context of the debate about wealthy kids going to university. He then went on to say, ‘I am not saying that unintelligent parents can’t have intelligent kids, but by and large the wealthy in the community are the intelligent in the community, and they have intelligent kids.’ That was the view on the record of the member for Herbert.

I do not know why we bother with education generally, why we bother with tertiary entrance exams. We should just ask the children how rich their parents are and say, ‘Your mum and dad are rich enough; you can go to school.’ That was the considered view of the member for Herbert, so if he wants to come in here and feign concern about the interests of education he should first have a look at the record of his own party in government, which was appalling, and reflect on his own position about these matters, which is even more appalling. (Time expired)

Andrew Laming (Bowman, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I would like to focus on the present, rather than reading from some archaic tablet about the history of education in Queensland, and commend this motion. We have to recognise Queensland teachers for the great work they do, and there is no better example of that than a Brisbane bayside initiative, the bayside excellence in teaching alliance, which is government and non-government schools working together to further the profession of teaching, to establish a network of teachers who will meet to talk about the advances in teaching and have a collegial dialogue about the great challenges that this great profession faces. We are expecting teachers from scores of schools in the bayside area. Attendance is already overflowing, and I think it will be a very successful meeting when it happens next week.

Unfortunately, these wonderful, talented teachers exist in a system that is not only broken but broke. I want to highlight the recent initiative to build seven schools in Queensland by a state government that actually has no money at all. Instead of embarking on a public-private partnership, it embarked on a private handover of structural debt because there simply is no public money to add to the solution anymore. The structured debt arrangement to build seven schools, including one in my electorate, for a total cost of around $300 million in today’s dollars, will cost the Queensland taxpayer $1.1 billion over 30 years because this decrepit state government could not find any private partner to fund the project. Every bank consortium failed to fund it completely, and in the end the government had to turn to a construction company to buy that commercial debt.

This is the saddest of days in funding education because, quite simply, the 30 years that it will take to pay off this structured debt will see the students of today become 40-year-old parents, with children, and potentially grandkids, of their own before the debt is repaid. The Bligh government will pay off two instalments over two years before they go to an election and they will leave the other 28 instalments to governments of the future to pay off. The Bligh government are artificially hiding their debt. The Bligh government are artificially not funding schools the way they should and they are abrogating their responsibility to provide schools in my electorate.

Let us get the record straight. There is no getting around the NAPLAN scores; there is no getting around the fact that this Premier, Anna Bligh, was the education minister from 2001 to 2005. And what were the scores after five years of ‘the smart state’ under this Premier? Reading scores were the lowest in the country, writing was the lowest in the country, grammar was the lowest in the country, bullying was the highest in the country, numeracy was the lowest in the country and punctuation was the lowest in the country. There is no getting around that and there is no getting around the lack of funding in the area.

The one thing that is absolutely startling and shines like a light is the flurry of excuses that have come out of this administration. We have had ever-increasing attempts to explain away this fall in outcomes for Queensland students, as a reflection of age and maturity, not having a prep year—every imaginable excuse. But what we are left with are committed teachers fighting for what they know is right in a situation where principals are not given the autonomy, independence and power to make their schools better places.

I phoned one of my principals and I said: ‘Give me a rough idea of how much you can spend in a discretionary way on your school.’ They said, ‘In a discretionary way—the money that I can actually devote to maintenance in my school? Mine is a band 4-5 school. Andrew, my budget is about $20,000 to $25,000 a year to spend on maintenance.’ That is an enormous shame. Take that figure and apply it to this structured debt arrangement—which is theft; it is transfer of resources straight to the private sector for schools that this state administration cannot build. And it is good to see a Queensland Labor MP here tonight facing that music, because that arrangement is simply transferring $700 million into the private sector for the privilege of hiding debt on behalf of the government—and that is the shame. That is the shame: this government that claimed a $15 billion GFC-induced bailout now discovers that it is $2.7 billion. But they will still sell off all those assets: the Port of Brisbane, the motorways, the rail, the forestry—poof, all gone in a puff of smoke. All of the dividends for the future have been lost to our children and grandchildren. The case for sell-offs was built on GFC deficits which never materialised. All we have is government-induced debt and mismanagement, and the teachers and principals in the Queensland state system suffer as a result of the Bligh administration.

Jon Sullivan (Longman, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I have heard some humbug in my life—and I am quite old now—but that just about takes the cake. The member for Bowman talked about the privatisation program in Queensland, and, let us face it, there are a large number of Queenslanders who are not at all happy about that program. But let me tell you, Member for Bowman, the happiest looking faces in the parliament in Queensland when that announcement was made were the members of your own party, the LNP. Do you know what they said? They said, ‘They haven’t gone far enough,’ because your side of politics not only wants to sell off what the Queensland government finds itself in a position of having to sell off now—it wants to sell off everything else, too! So don’t come in here with your humbug and lies, and carry on about that!

Ramsey Rowen (the Deputy Speaker):

The DEPUTY SPEAKER interjecting

Jon Sullivan (Longman, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am sorry. I withdraw.

Peter Lindsay (Herbert, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Lindsay interjecting

Deputy Speaker The:

The DEPUTY SPEAKER interjecting

Jon Sullivan (Longman, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I have withdrawn. Mr Deputy Speaker Ramsey, I had withdrawn 3,000 times before that humbugging member got up. Let us talk about the motion he has put on the books, and let us talk about what he talked about: Jason Inch and Stuart State School, and his motion including ‘classroom overcrowding, Third World facilities, the ever-increasing workload on our teachers’. You know, I might give you that. As the member for Brisbane central said, we ask our teachers to do an awful lot and we are never able to put enough money into education or health. But, in Queensland, 25 per cent of the budget goes into education, 25 per cent goes into health, and that leaves 50 per cent for everything else. There are a lot of things in this motion that we could agree on. We could agree on the dedication of the teachers, as the member for Bowman said. But I tell you what: there is a lot of ratbaggery and humbug in this motion. Take, for instance:

… condemns the Queensland Government over its continuing education budget cuts …

I just happen to have some figures on the education budget for recent years. In 2007-08, the education budget was $7.836 billion in Queensland. In 2008-09 it was $8.328 billion—an increase of $492 million, or 6.3 per cent in round terms. In 2009-10, it was $9.654 billion, an increase of $1.326 billion over the previous year, or nearly a 16 per cent increase. Is that what you call continuous cuts in budgets? I think you need to get your story straight.

I can understand that you are here presenting a communication that you have had from a single teacher in your electorate. Well, let me tell you what we do on our side of parliament. We meet regularly with the Queensland Teachers Union representatives because we are interested in education—we are seriously interested in education—and we met with them as recently as last week to discuss education issues with them.

One of the reasons that I am interested in education—perhaps a little bit more interested than you, Member for Herbert—is the number of students in our respective areas. I did some figures on your electorate versus mine. Let us have a look at 2007. You had 12,731 students; I had 21,556—although it was not my electorate at the time. You had 961 teachers; I had 1,291. You had a teacher to student ratio of one teacher to every 13.2 students. In my electorate of Longman, where there are nearly twice as many students, there was one teacher to every 16.7 students. And those types of figures have remained constant. You had 13.2, 13.3, 13.3, 13.3. You have dropped—

Peter Lindsay (Herbert, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am an effective local member.

Jon Sullivan (Longman, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

An effective local member! Rubbish! You are talking about a school that you think needs to be improved, so how effective are you? And while we are talking about school improvements, tell me how you voted on the BER. What did you say to Jason Entsch when he came to you and asked how you voted on the BER money? You are two-faced and you are causing trouble. You have no interest in teachers.

Peter Lindsay (Herbert, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Lindsay interjecting

Jon Sullivan (Longman, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Give both faces a wipe; it would be a good idea. The Queensland government went to the 2009 election offering a flying start. What have we been doing in Queensland in recent times—(Time expired)

Ramsey Rowen (the Deputy Speaker):

Order! The time allotted for this debate has expired. The debate is adjourned and the resumption of the debate will be made an order of the day for the next sitting.